Nate McMillan

Boston did well in getting compensation for Doc Rivers’s move — it was clear in the next year or two he was gone anyway (he wanted no part of the coming rebuild). Boston got a first round pick and a graceful exit from the situation. Well played. (Now look for them to trade Paul Pierce…

Of the 16 teams that made the NBA playoffs, it appears six of them will be changing coaches this season. That includes one of the final four (Memphis, unless there is a change of heart and they re-sign Hollins). If Memphis does make a change, that will be 11 teams total making a move, tying…

There are a lot of coaching interview rumors right now — basically the same handful of guys interviewing for every open job while those fan bases dream of Phil Jackson and Stan Van Gundy. What follows is a wrap up of the weekend news from the coaching searches going on. • The Suns are going…

The Lakers need to play better defense next season… unless they enjoyed how this season went. Thanks to terrible transition defense, shake perimeter defense and Dwight Howard’s back slowing him, the Lakers finished 19th in the NBA in points allowed per possession. As does everything with the Lakers right now, some of that blame is…

When the Lakers take the court Friday night to take on the banged up Golden State Warriors, Bernie Bickerstaff will coach the Los Angeles Lakers. Who will coach the team in a couple of weeks is a different question entirely. The Lakers have fired Mike Brown — when Kobe gives you a death stare it…

This was expected once the Pacers were eliminated from the playoffs. Pacers lead assistant coach and former Phil Jackson right hand man Brian Shaw is going to interview for the Charlotte Bobcats coaching job this week, reports ESPN. They also plan to meet with Lakers assistant Quin Snyder in Chicago before the NBA pre-draft camp…

Nate McMillan will be an NBA coach somewhere next year if he wants to be. Every time an opening comes up, his name will be there after he did a strong job leading a Portland Trail Blazers team led by Brandon Roy. He will get a lot of interviews. First up is the Charlotte Bobcats,…

Jim Boeheim should be nervous. Let’s just say, I’m not betting on Syracuse next week. It’s been a tough week for three of the four coaches that will lead Team USA this summer in the 2012 Olympics in London — Mike Krzyzewski, Mike D’Antoni and Nate McMillan. Head coach Krzyzewski’s Duke Blue Devils screwed up…

On another website, in the fourth week of the season, I had the Trail Blazers as the fifth best team in the league in an edition of the power rankings. They looked awesome. I use that word a lot, but in the Blazers’ case, it was true. They played some of the best ball by any…

The team on the cusp of contention with a full roster is typically a bad omen for some deep-reserve player or another; in their efforts to improve via trade or free agency, teams almost inevitably have to release players as a space-creating endeavor, getting nothing in return but the freedom to go about their transaction…

The Portland Trail Blazers secured an emotional home win over the evil Lakers on Thursday, and afterward, the team didn’t make it to its hotel in Phoenix until 4 a.m. local time the next morning. Add those two facts together, and you get the result of Friday night’s game against the Suns: a 102-77 shellacking…

Since billionaire owners and millionaire players are bitterly divided over how much money they’ll be splitting over the coming years and have locked us out of actual basketball to talk about, PBT will be regaling you this summer on the weekends withRetroBall. Using the advanced powers of the internet and NBATV, we’ll bring you interesting stories…

One of the big trades on draft day involved the Portland Trail Blazers acquiring 27-year old point guard Raymond Felton, who had what was perhaps the best season of his career last season while playing for both the Knicks and the Nuggets after he was sent to Denver in the Carmelo Anthony trade. With veteran…

UPDATE 3:48 pm: After practice on Thursday, Roy apologized for his complaints about playing time, according to the Associated Press. He said it came from a place of frustration. Which is a place it is understandable Roy inhabits. If he weren’t frustrated, he’d be a cyborg. But that still does not change what Nate McMillan…

Brandon Roy is not that Brandon Roy anymore. He’s not the three-time All-Star, the guy who can regularly take over games, who was an elite guard, who was a building block of the Portland franchise. His knees have robbed him — and us, for he was a joy to watch — of that. Roy himself…

Nate McMillan might as well have pulled out his checkbook while he was talking to the media after his Trail Blazers’ Game One loss to the Mavericks Saturday. The amount to write in — $35,000. That’s what the league announced. That’s pretty steep, but NBA Commissioner David Stern had warned that after last year (where…

In the fourth quarter Saturday, the Dallas Mavericks shot 19 free throws, the Portland Trail Blazers 2. That was key to the Dallas win. After the game Blazers coach Nate McMillan sounded like a guy who wanted to avoid getting a fine for questioning the officiating, but he couldn’t help himself, as reported in the…

Nate McMillan has coached his… um, tie off this season. He came into the season with a healthy Brandon Roy (so we thought) and the big defensive force in the paint named Greg Oden that the team needed. This was a playoff team with some real upside. But the injury bug that hit some teams…

Trail Blazers coach Nate McMillan pumped the brakes on Brandon Roy’s return from having both knees operated on. Which makes sense because he had both knees operated on! Things are not good. I mean really, really not good. More rest seems the smart thing, but Roy wants to play. And McMillan can only keep him…

Brandon Roy is ready to come back and play this weekend. He has been cleared to practice and if there is one thing we know from Brandon Roy’s history it’s that he wants back on the court. Yesterday. Blazers coach Nate McMillan is a more patient man. And he may force Roy (and Marcus Camby)…

Paul Silas will have his first game as the interim head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats Monday, replacing Larry Brown. But already there is speculation about who will replace Silas next season (Silas does not want to give up the job so easily). Marc Stein of ESPN threw out an interesting name. Look for Blazers…

It doesn’t sound like Nate McMillan is going anywhere. After a weekend of speculation that Nate McMillan’s seat was getting warm after a slow start for the Trail Blazers and a recent six-game losing streak, team president Larry Miller threw water on that fire. Miller went on 95.5 FM in Portland’s pregame show and sounded…

Sunday night the Blazers are getting healthy at the expense of the Los Angeles Clippers, which is a good team to get healthy against. It will snap a six-game losing streak that has seen some ugly play out a Blazers team many thought would rebound this season. There are injury issues in Portland — Gregg…

You know, when you think about it “Hey, it could always be worse” is kind of a cruel thing to say to someone. Because if things go badly enough to justify you saying that to them? They likely haven’t just started going bad, or had one bad thing happen. Most bad things tend to happen…

Brandon Roy played just 20 minutes against Detroit Tuesday night. Roy the explosive athlete and game changer is missing, his left knee is bothering him to the point the Trail Blazers are having everything reviewed by a specialist in Los Angeles, with an answer expected maybe early next week. But when the Blazers hit the…